Basecamp Liverpool and Open Labs are staging an a new networking event for businesses at Baltic Creative Campus on 4th December at 5.30pm.

Liverpool skills swap aims to assist businesses to access resources they currently do not have or cannot afford, address a current skills gap, solve an existing problem, raise their company profile, gain access to industry contacts; access business support in areas such as accountancy, marketing, legal etc or access specific industry support in design, gaming etc.

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Don't get too excited with the laser refence - you won't be building Star Wars light Sabres, this is practical stuff for designers and start-ups wanting to find out how laser cutting could help them get their product our there fast. The course is led by Def-Proc Engineering at Does Liverpool - the home of laser cutting in Liverpool

If you are an avid Drupal developer or looking to get into DRupal then DrupalCamp NW 2013 is perfect for you. This is a 2 day event for designers, developers and curious beginners. It offers unrivalled learning, knowledge sharing and networking opportunities for the Drupal community. Highlights of the weekend will be Sensio Labs talking about the Symfony and Drupal 8 partnership and Lewis Nyman discussing design changes and processes thathave been introduced in Drupal 8 and how that effects Drupal moving forward.

The Allotment Office are hosting an open day for all freelancers to come and take advantage of the facilities available. They will be presenting various workshops throughout the day to assist you in setting up your own business from business planning to funding.

With Nesta anouncing that five arts and cultural projects will receive funding from the £7 million Digital R&D Fund for the Arts earlier this month - is it about time that we saw more of this money coming to the North West more speciaficaly Liverpool based arts and cultural organisations.

These R&D projects are testing the use of digital technologies to widen audience access and engagement in the arts, with the purpose of developing useful products, services and knowledge for the wider the arts and cultural sector so surely we could be applying for some of this money here.

One of the outcomes from last weekends Oggcamp - if you missed it catch it next year - is that a new group is being set up on Merseyside to look at building drones. No not for crusing the city and spying on us - well not yet anyway but as a way of honing engineering skills and inspiring other people to build their own projects.

It's been away awhile but it is now back with us and we are hoping for a great weekend discovering all sorts of digital quackery. Yes, people will be constructing their own internet and taking selfies while on the loo, so suffice to say yes it is the AND Festival. The same people who brought you David Shrigley giving people tattoos in Untility's window are entertaining us over the wekend with a pile of other mad performamces, cinema and digital interventions. (Yes I said interventions)

There are loads of really cool events and workshops so do check out the AND website for those.

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) published their new £26m Creative Industries Strategy last week. Alongside the Strategy, the TSB is announcing a number of funding programmes to be launched in the next six months. This major new investment is intended to boost innovation and growth for the UK's creative and digital businesses. The funding is aimed at major collaborative research and development projects. If you want to know more, details are on their website.